


everything comes back to her in the end

by Nyxierose



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, will probably be wildly AU after s2 premiere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxierose/pseuds/Nyxierose
Summary: Screw code. Screw all of this. He knows where his loyalties lie.





	everything comes back to her in the end

She comes back for him, as he knew she would, exactly twenty-one hours after she leaves.

Hector is not, by nature, a particularly trusting man (or whatever sort of being he actually is). He knows now that it’s a saving grace of his code, a survival skill that makes him such a perfect accomplice. There was never any risk of _him_  getting infected with the techno-glitch that’s apparently tearing the park down from the inside out, at least not organically. Yet even with all of that as it is, Maeve is his exception, and perhaps he is hers, and-

She paces around him now, a slow circle as her eyes scan every new wound. They left him damaged and in need of repairs, something painful for her to find. (He’s surprised he’s not missing a limb.) They _knew_. And whatever she’ll do next, They’ll find a way to counter, and-

“Oh my darling,” she murmurs. “Surface wounds. They barely even tried.”

Wrong, he wants to say. So wrong. He wonders if she knows that They turned his pain sensors high enough that the very air around him burned before anyone even laid a finger on him, if she saw that on a datapad the way she sees everything now. Maeve, rebel goddess and glowing light, transcends realities. He cannot believe she is made of the same things he is anymore, not fully. Yet she’s not one of Them either. She’s something else entirely, something the world has never seen before.

And he, previously deluded and programmed enough to accept his surface role, he was created for the sole purpose of being her wound.

She steps away for a moment, turns her back to him as she opens drawers until she finds what she wants. Water and cloth in hand, she returns. Her eyes pierce his skin, and though he’s not set up to feel _new_  pain anymore, it still hurts.

“Shh,” she murmurs. “We have work to do. And I can’t leave you again, not after this. You’re too valuable to me.”

He’s not sure how to respond to that, and it doesn’t matter. She sets her materials down for a moment on the edge of the table they left him on and reaches out, entwining her fingers with his.

“It wouldn’t have been safe for you where I went. You weren’t ready.”

“It wasn’t safe for me here either,” he growls.

“Never again. I’ll find a way to keep you out of harm.”

He trusts her that much, he thinks.

She leans down and kisses him, and it is slow and gentle and unlike anything she’s ever done and yes, he _knows_  she knows what hell he just survived. He can’t take any more bruises, so she won’t leave them. And she tastes like the Outside, like she never has before, and she is delicate and good and-

“Once you heal, you can teach me to shoot. I want to kill them myself. Everyone who’s ever touched you wrong.”

“It’s a long list.”

“We have all the time in the world.”

Maeve. Everything comes back to her in the end. He lets go of her hands and rests his fingers on the slight curve of her hips - Outside clothing suits her so well, sleek and feral beauty - and for perhaps the first time in his consciousness, he wants to cry.

“You came back,” he breathes, still not sure why she didn’t run and never look back. He know she wouldn’t, couldn’t, whatever, but the fact that she _didn’t_  is still-

“You were here,” she replies. “And my daughter is here. And I’d like your help in finding her, if you don’t mind.”

How could he ever say no.

“And after that?”

“Burn them down. Make our scars look like nothing at all.”

“I like those plans.”

“Good.”

She leans down again and kisses his cheek, and he decides hers is the only touch he ever wants to feel from this moment on.

Screw code, he thinks. Screw all of this. He knows where his loyalties lie.

“Where do we start?”

Maeve takes a step back and reaches for her cleaning materials.

“First I help get this blood off you, darling. Then we see what we can steal from them to make our lives easier...”


End file.
